Communications Breakdown: X Marked the Spot

Threats against legacy media abound

Image via Writings by Joe

There’s a cold wind blowing toward legacy media organizations these days, and the President-elect is just getting started.

In the weeks before the election, the New York Times, Penguin Random House, CBS News, the Washington Post, and the Daily Beast were all notified they were the targets of legal challenges stemming from coverage disliked by Donald Trump.

From the Columbia Journalism Review: 

• The drumbeat of legal threats signals a potentially ominous trend for journalists during Trump’s second term in office. Litigation is costly and time-consuming. Most news organizations will look to settle rather than face months—more likely years—of discovery and depositions, plus significant legal fees.

• “It really has a mental chilling effect to be under a microscope like that,” Anne Champion, a partner at Gibson Dunn who has represented CNN, Jim Acosta, Mary Trump, and Brian Karem in legal matters involving Donald Trump, said in an interview.  

• “It is both conscious and unconscious. Journalists at smaller outlets know very well that the costs for their organization to defend themselves could mean bankruptcy. Even journalists at larger outlets don’t want to burden themselves or their employees with lawsuits. It puts another layer of influence into the journalistic process,” she said.

While stories about Trump’s clown car nominations for posts in his upcoming administration have led to headlines in recent days, evidence of his intention to wreak revenge on imagined or real opponents continues to mount.

His campaign blocked multiple reporters from its election watch event in Mar-a-Lago last week, including those from Politico, Axios and Puck News.

From Voice of America News:

• Leading up to and during his time as president, Trump published more than 2,000 posts on social media that the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker classified as anti-media. After Trump left the White House, his anti-media rhetoric has continued.

• Between September 1 and October 24, Trump verbally insulted, attacked or threatened the media at least 108 times in public, RSF found in a study. RSF has not conducted a similar study about Vice President Harris because she does not make those kinds of anti-media statements, Weimers said.

• “By just accepting that as a piece of this political moment, I do think there’s a risk that the American public has grown numb to how serious it is, what an aberration it is, and how dangerous it could be going forward,” Weimers said in a phone interview.

Following an announcement of the unlucky soul with the job of being the face of the incoming administration, Axios reports that the pecking order in the daily press briefings will undergo a shake up, with MAGA-aligned news outlets expecting credentials giving them more access.

Repeated partisan disparagement of media coverage over the past couple of decades, along with engagement with on-line platforms, has rendered the business model for legacy media in print and over the airwaves seemingly unsustainable over the not-very-long term. The real action in old school communications is coming from private equity groups selling off assets and consolidation of local by national ownerships. 

From the Washington Post (June, 2024)

• Americans simply don’t trust the media, particularly when it comes to politics. Swing-state polling from The Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University found that only 3 in 10 residents of six of the most important states in this year’s presidential election trust that the media will fairly and accurately report political news. Seven in 10 indicated that they had not too much trust in that occurring — or that they had no trust at all.

If nothing else, Trump 2.0 will coincide with even more upheaval in the ways we consume current news, information, and perspectives.

One of those changes has accelerated in dramatic fashion since election day, namely an exodus of users at Elon Musk’s X, once (as Twitter) the most influential of social media outlets in political circles.

There are three contributors to this migration:

1. Enshittification of the feed, meaning that the interests of ownership are placed before those of consumers.

2. Musk’s degradation and manipulation of content, largely favoring a MAGA agenda and showing extremist views once banned for anti-social behavior.

3. And, today, a change in the application’s Terms of Service, whereby users are forced to consent to Musk’s version of artificial intelligence using their postings as training material. BONUS- If you want to sue you must do it in a Texas jurisdiction ruled over by a wackadoodle right wing judge.

Major public figures and companies have announced their exit plans from X in recent days, including Etsy, Adobe, Android, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Mastercard, McDonald's, CVS Pharmacy, Walmart, Nicole Wallace, and MarketPlace host Kai Ryssdal. 

The day after the election, X experienced 115,414 account deactivations, the most it has gotten since Musk took ownership of the site, according to research by Similarweb, a third-party company that tracks social media analytics.

People who aren’t sick and tired of (mostly) text-based social media feeds are migrating to Threads (owned by Meta/Facebook/Instagram) and Bluesky (Started by Twitter founder Jack, who has since abandoned the platform.)

The last major upheaval in social media took place in the wake of the 2016 election, when companies decided to homogenize their content, by excluding minor media and downgrading news content in general. 

By the time this year’s election rolled around, Facebook was all-but-banning the stories I write, not even showing them often to users who specifically asked to see it. And X/Twitter was filtering out (except for MAGA garbage) posts featuring links to publications.

In the days after Elon Musk bought Twitter (with foreign financing), I decided to explore other options that declared a desire to replace the content I was attracted to in text-based social media in the first place. (I joined Twitter in May, 2009)

Specifically, I signed up for Tribel (which promised SMARTER content), Mastodon (which promised more control over content), Spoutible (promised fixing everything wrong with Twitter), Threads (Instagram’s "positive and creative space to express your ideas"), and Bluesky (easy to curate feeds and share links).

Over the past two years, I have shared links, boosted my daily rantings, and joined in connecting with other users on all four. My criteria for success with these type apps is that they’re useful for research, and at least a few of their users engage with content I share.

As of today, I’m finding Bluesky to be the most personally useful. Threads has a high number of users, but has essentially incorporated Zuckerberg’s “no news” policy into its algorithm. I got little to no engagement and diminishing useful information from Tribel, Mastodon, and Spoutible. Bluesky allows me to organize my reading under as many of nine thousand categories and shows links to news stories and articles from all over. 

The downsides of Bluesky are occasional bumps in service and the effort required to interest others in my work. Currently there is a five to one ratio of people I follow to people who follow me. (I’m at dougbob506) Oh, and no trolls.

***

Politico and other sold-out media have been pushing a narrative about diminished interest in movement building to resist the Trump administration. It seems as though a lack of large demonstrations and pink knitted caps has convinced them that everybody’s willing to roll over and go along to get along just like they are.

Just as the threats from Trump 2.0 are different than what we feared in 2016, so is the organizing against Project 2025 and the Christofascist agenda.

For one, our Dear Leader is obviously setting the stage for military intervention when he feels discomfort. Unlike rightwing militia-types, we don’t see much sense in providing ourselves as target practice.

Also, the reality that Trump has a trifecta in DC dictates a focus on the other checks and balances created in the constitution, namely the power vested in the states.

Twenty thousand resistors joined Senator Elizabeth Warren online this week for a discussion of strategy and tactics. The latest Indivisible Guide contains many topics covered in that conversation.

There are plenty of groups organizing themselves. Here in the Golden State, “We Are California” is a coalition of community-based non-profits with a history of getting things done.

Finally, there is a whole world of writers out there flogging ideas at Substack. Look at the list posted in the graphic at the end of this article for ideas. I’ll be updating it soon, as the results of the general election have resulted in increased readership for this place and cash flow used to support other independent writers doing good work.

***

Friday Finds in the News World

***

Cracks Among the Crackpots by Jay Kuo at the Status Kuo

• Make no mistake. Trump, who is driving the clown car, is creating a spectacle and trolling us hard. His own party members, who ought to be used to him acting this way, are reportedly shocked by the appointments. It’s as if Trump is daring his own GOP Senate to oppose him and vote them down.

• And it’s still an open question whether they will. Keep an eye on this, because if they fold here, they will fold on nearly anything, including preserving and protecting the ACA, Social Security and Medicare.

• This is all really terrible, no question. But you know me. I’m always looking for signs that Trump and the GOP are overreaching and overplaying their hand. With an autocrat like Trump in charge, the story is often about how his underlings will maneuver, curry favor, and try to carve out as much for themselves as they can without offending Dear Leader. 

***

Michael Smolens: The notion of massive election fraud was, of course, the real fraud at the Union-Tribune

• Donald Trump and way too many of his supporters who know better claimed throughout the campaign that, again, the voting would be rigged against him — right up through Election Day, until it was clear he’d won.

• Then it stopped in a heartbeat. That might have been one of the least surprising things about this election.

• It doesn’t quite work to say the American people have spoken in your favor while casting suspicion on the election outcome. What had caused outrage in some quarters for months or years suddenly was met with a shrug, if that.

***

As sources say Trump could deport undocumented Chinese first, Asian American groups rush to prep by Kimmy Yan at NBCNews

• Undocumented immigrants from China who are deemed to be of military age will be among the first groups targeted for deportation by the incoming Trump administration, sources close to the campaign previously told NBC News, citing the potential risk to national security.

• While many community organizations have been making plans for months in anticipation of Trump’s immigration promises, the potential to be targeted has left many groups prepping immigration materials across Asian languages and coordinating with other community nonprofits to help serve the potential spike in families impacted by deportations.

• Asian Americans have long had the fastest-growing undocumented population, tripling over a 15-year period, from 2000 to 2015, and the number of Chinese nationals crossing into the U.S. has skyrocketed in recent years. Between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, the number of undocumented Chinese nationals crossing both the northern and southern borders has tripled from just more than 27,000 to more than 78,000.